Buyer's Remorse

A devout conservative co-worker asked me this morning if I had “buyer’s remorse” about voting for President Obama yet. Let me answer that by saying that every time that I type the words PRESIDENT OBAMA, my heart SINGS!

But please allow me to be a little more concise here.

The first thing that I should say is that, in his first two months in office, there are things that I wish that he would do differently. I wish, for instance, that he would tool up on corporations a little more than he is. This AIG fiasco is a case in point, giving some hundred and a half million of OUR MONEY to the executives who caused their business to fail in the first place as “bonuses”. And the rich get richer… and we’re going to pretend to be offended by this NOW? After THIRTY YEARS OF THIS STUFF? By the same token, I recognize the political reality. I recognize that the republican party has spent the last thirty years convincing the republicans of my generation that if we do anything… absolutely ANYTHING… to reign in the excesses of big business, America will fall apart at the seams, the sun will come crashing into the ocean, dogs will marry cats, and every Bible in the world will suddenly burst into turds. It also tickles me when I tell someone about Comcast’s latest dirty trick (requiring everyone to get a “free” standard-definition cable box in order to deprive basic cable viewers of receiving their local channels in HD for free), someone that I KNOW to be a pro-business republican, and they respond with “THAT’S NOT FAIR! WHY DOESN’T SOMEONE TELL THEM THEY CAN’T?!” Because you are so careful to elect republicans who WON’T, that’s why. You gotta love this. Screw up our elections, erase our bill of rights line by line, imprison Americans for speaking out against the occupier of the Oval Office, oh well… but screw with their TV…

By the way, to all cable customers out there who are having this dirty trick pulled on them… the answer is to hook an indoor digital antenna to your HDTV. Then you can receive whatever digital broadcasts are being sent out in your area… including the locals in HD… and still receive the same standard-definition cable through your box that you’ve always received.

Bottom line of this train of thought is that I don’t ever expect to slavishly agree with EVERYTHING that a sitting president does. If I did… well, I’d be a republican, wouldn’t I?

The next thing that I’d like to say… I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… I AM NOT A PARTISAN. I AM NOT A DEMOCRAT. I did not vote for Barack Obama out of blind party loyalty, I voted for him because I thought then (and think now) that he’s the best thing for America. The best thing that we’ve seen in a LONG TIME. Hate to sound melodramatic, but he may well be the last hope to restore America to our pre-Reagan glory.

I think that the reason that my republican loved ones, friends and acquaintances have a hard time with this is because they cannot imagine voting for anyone who is not a republican. I have jokingly said that 30% of America will march robotically to the polls every election day and pull the lever for whatever republican candidate is on the ticket – if it’s GWB, or John McCain, or Sarah Palin or Osama Bin Laden or Adolf Harpo Hitler. (His middle name WAS Harpo, wasn’t it?)

I heard perhaps the greatest evaluation of this partisan mess that we’ve gotten our country in today from General Richard B. Meyers interviewed on Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show”. He said that the republicans and the democrats have turned into the bloods and the crips – just with better tailors.

This is how non-partisan I am… in 2000, if the republicans had done the SANE thing and nominated John McCain… this was the pre-kissing-Bush’s-ass-back-when-he-was-a-genuine-maverick McCain… I would have voted for McCain in a HEARTBEAT. And I think that if we had elected President McCain instead of allowing usurper Bush to steal the election, that we wouldn’t be in HALF the mess that we’re in today.

So do I have buyer’s remorse? No. Do I think that we’re better off than if the new and vastly unimproved McCain had been elected? Yes. Do I agree with everything that the President has done? No, nor do I expect to. I have a brain, you see, and a working Bullshit Detector.

Think, brothers and sisters.

Be critical.

Don’t swallow the bullshit without a fight.

Peace.

Randal